Motivational Quotes

Ideas

Ideas are, in truth, force.

- James, Henry

Best Quotes about Ideas

I had a monumental idea this morning, but I didn't like it.

Samuel Goldwyn

There are well-dressed foolish ideas, just as there are will-dressed fools.

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

An idea is a feat of association, and the height of it is a good metaphor.

Frost, Robert

There is no prosperity, trade, art, city, or great material wealth of any kind, but if you trace it home, you will find it rooted in a thought of some individual man. --

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

All achievements, all earned riches, have their beginning in an idea.

Hill, Napoleon

Getting an idea should be like sitting down on a pin. It should make you jump up and do something.

Simpson, E. L.

The difference between people and ideas is... only superficial.

Rorty, Richard

If a man had as many ideas during the day as he does when he has insomnia, he would make a fortune.

Niblack, Griff

Human life is driven forward by its dim apprehension of notions too general for its existing language.

Whitehead, Alfred North

10.

Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.

John Steinbeck

11.

But how shall I get ideas? Keep your wits open! Observe! Observe! Study! Study! But above all, Think! Think! And when a noble image is indelibly impressed upon the mind -- Act!

Marden, Orison Swett

12.

Great ideas originate in the muscles.

Edison, Thomas A.

13.

Greater than the tread of mighty armies is an idea whose time has come.

Hugo, Victor

14.

Ideas are a capital that bears interest only in the hands of talent.

Rivarol, Antoine

15.

Ideas... they have the power

Hill, Napoleon

16.

So long as new ideas are created, sales will continue to reach new highs.

Brande, Dorothea

17.

You have to hatch ideas -- and then hitch them.

Everson, Ray D.

18.

If you want to get across an idea, wrap it up in a person.

Bunche, Ralph

19.

An idea is a putting truth in check-mate.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

20.

Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

21.

Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

22.

Ideas are refined and multiplied in the commerce of minds. In their splendor, images effect a very simple communion of souls.

Bachelard, Gaston

23.

Concepts, like individuals, have their histories and are just as incapable of withstanding the ravages of time as are individuals. But in and through all this they retain a kind of homesickness for the scenes of their childhood.

Kierkegaard, S°ren

24.

I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones.

John Cage

25.

Man's fear of ideas is probably the greatest dike holding back human knowledge and happiness.

Ernst, Morris L.

26.

It doesn't matter how new an idea is: what matters is how new it becomes.

Canetti, Elias

27.

What you need is an idea.

Lear, William P.

28.

Ideas too are a life and a world.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

29.

Never hesitate to steal a good idea.

Neuharth, Al

30.

Ideas won't work unless you do.

31.

Nothing dies harder than a bad idea.

Cameron, Julie

32.

Good ideas are not adopted automatically. They must be driven into practice with courageous patience.

Hyman Rickover

33.

There is no adequate defense, except stupidity, against the impact of a new idea.

Bridgman, P. W.

34.

To love an idea is to love it a little more than one should.

Rostand, Jean

35.

Many ideas are good for a limited time -- not forever.

Townsend, Robert

36.

Ideas are the roots of creation.

Dimnet, Ernest

37.

Every composer knows the anguish and despair occasioned by forgetting ideas which one had no time to write down.

Hector Berlioz

38.

Ideals are like stars: you will not succeed in touching them with your hands, but like the seafaring man on the ocean desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them, you reach your destiny.

Carl Schurz

39.

It is not always by plugging away at a difficulty and sticking to it that one overcomes it; often it is by working on the one next to it. Some things and some people have to be approached obliquely, at an angle.

Gide, Andre

40.

The greatest achievements of the human mind are generally received with distrust.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

41.

There are only two kinds of scholars; those who love ideas and those who hate them.

Emile Chartier

42.

Great people talk about ideas. Small people talk about other people.

Gibson, Tobias S.

43.

Brain cells create ideas. Stress kills brain cells. Stress is not a good idea.

Saunders, Richard

44.

Nothing is more dangerous than an idea, when you only have one.

Chartier, Alain

45.

The ideas dictate everything, you have to be true to that or you're dead.

Lynch, David

46.

Every revolutionary idea seems to evoke three stages of reaction. They may be summed up by the phrases: (1) It's completely impossible. (2) It's possible, but it's not worth doing. (3) I said it was a good idea all along.

Clarke, Arthur C.

47.

The point, simply, is that we are doing more rediscovering these days than discovering coming anew upon truths that ignorant people refused to examine, over the centuries, because the wise people who held custody of the fundamental truths of nature were unpopular.

Williamson, John

48.

We are governed not by armies, but by ideas.

Caird, Mona

49.

The idea that is not dangerous is not worthy of being called an idea at all.

Hubbard, Elbert

50.

Do not follow the ideas of others, but learn to listen to the voice within yourself. Your body and mind will become clear and you will realize the unity of all things.

Dogen